Dear colleagues, Thank you for your previous interest in the online webinars organized by the IAEA Radiation Protection of Patients Unit (RPOP). We would like to invite you to join us for our next webinar, which will be held online on Tuesday, 24th January 2023, at 3 pm CEST (Vienna time) in English. This webinar will focus on the outcomes of the pilot phase of the American College of Radiology (ACR) Fluoroscopy Dose Index Registry (DIR-Fluoro). This new module of the ACR Dose Index Registry was established to collect dose index data from fluoroscopically guided interventional (FGI) radiology procedures, which are increasingly used as a less invasive and safer alternative to conventional surgery. The DIR allows participating sites to transfer dose index data electronically to a central data repository, where they are analysed, and summary reports are produced. This enables participants to benchmark their facility dose data against regional and national values thus facilitating procedure optimization and improved patient care. The DIR-Fluoro pilot phase collected data from March 2018 through December 2019, with 50 fluoroscopy systems from 10 sites submitting data. Primary radiation dose indices provided by the fluoroscopy systems, including fluoroscopy time, cumulative air kerma, and kerma area product, were collected for FGI radiology procedures. Primary dose index data were used to compute several derived indices on a per-procedure basis, including procedure-averaged reference air kerma rate and procedure-averaged X-ray field size at the reference point. The names of the FGI procedures used in different clinical facilities were mapped to the ACR Common procedure lexicon. Dose indices were collected for 70,377 FGI during the pilot phase, with 50,501 ultimately eligible for analysis. Summary statistics including distribution parameters are available for 100 different ACR Common IDs during the pilot phase. DIR-Fluoro is now open for all sites interested to participate. The information can be found here. We look forward to seeing you. RPOP team |